In order to facilitate the identification of the individual wires in a multiple wire conduit or harness it has been a common practice to color code the plastic insulation on the wires. The usefulness of such color coding is, however, limited to relatively small numbers of wires, and this identification method frequently leads to wiring errors because of the inability of many persons to distinguish between particular colors. Identification information printed on the wires is also used for this purpose, but the information is difficult to read.
Another method which has been used to identify electric wires is to affix small, individually coded tags to the wires. This method has the major disadvantage of being time consuming, and moreover, inadvertent removal of the tags or obliteration of the printed symbols on the tags is a problem.
When making up a wiring harness or the like it is common practice to affix terminal lugs or connectors to the ends of the wires by a crimping operation. The terminals or connectors ordinarily include a generally tubular metal portion for receiving the stripped end of a wire and an overlying insulating sleeve formed of a plastic material to provide an insulating covering for the tubular portion of the terminal or connector. When preparing each individual wire, the insulation is stripped from the ends and the exposed metal core at one end of the wire is inserted into the tubular end of a terminal. The thus assembled pieces are placed between the opposing jaws of a crimping tool which is then actuated to flatten out and otherwise compress the tubular portion of the terminal to lock it onto the wire and to make a good, low-ohmic connection between the wire and the terminal. In this crimping operation the plastic sleeve is also flattened out and thereafter retains the flattened configuration.